Escaping History
We've all heard the famous admonition: "those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it." Many people are convinced that we are, once again, learning this lesson the hard way in Iraq. And they may be right. The parallels between Vietnam and Iraq are indeed striking: the deception, the premature triumphalism, the jingoistic rhetoric. It's all eerily reminiscent of the Vietnam era (to see just how reminsicent, see this excellent post by Glenn Greenwald). But it's never that simple. Historian Gerda Lerner once wrote:
With that in mind, I'm cautiously optimistic that today's elections in Iraq may indeed mark some sort of turning point. The strong turn out by Sunni Arabs is a promising sign. As I've written before, I think that the insurgents may have miscalculated badly when they started targeting Iraqi civilians. This indiscriminate killing appears to have alienated many Iraqis (as well as much of the Muslim world). Military commanders have reported that they are getting far more actionable intelligence than they have in the past, largely because of tips from the Sunni Arab population.
And perhaps most promising of all, President Bush has agreed to support an absolute ban on torture. Although this should have happened a long time ago, it is nevertheless an important step toward rebuilding America's tarnished image and winning the war on terror. And more importantly, it's a sign that the President is finally taking advice from someone other than Dick Cheney or Donald Rumsfeld. Thank God for that.
I don't want to overstate things. The situation in Iraq is still teetering on the brink. It could improve or it could degenerate rapidly. But I don't think the situation is hopeless. Only time will tell whether this is a case of history repeating itself or history charting a bold new course.
Mark Twain once said: "History doesn't repeat itself - at best it sometimes rhymes." He may be right, but thank God for today because I was getting pretty tired of the rhyming.
History is not a recipe book; past events areHistorical analogies, no matter how compelling, are never perfect. History is fundamentally indeterministic, and for that reason, there is always room for hope. As Kurt Vonnegut put it: "History is merely a list of surprises. It can only prepare us to be surprised yet again."
never replicated in the present in quite the
same way. Historical events are infinitely
variable and their interpretations are a
constantly shifting process. There are no
certainties to be found in the past.
With that in mind, I'm cautiously optimistic that today's elections in Iraq may indeed mark some sort of turning point. The strong turn out by Sunni Arabs is a promising sign. As I've written before, I think that the insurgents may have miscalculated badly when they started targeting Iraqi civilians. This indiscriminate killing appears to have alienated many Iraqis (as well as much of the Muslim world). Military commanders have reported that they are getting far more actionable intelligence than they have in the past, largely because of tips from the Sunni Arab population.
And perhaps most promising of all, President Bush has agreed to support an absolute ban on torture. Although this should have happened a long time ago, it is nevertheless an important step toward rebuilding America's tarnished image and winning the war on terror. And more importantly, it's a sign that the President is finally taking advice from someone other than Dick Cheney or Donald Rumsfeld. Thank God for that.
I don't want to overstate things. The situation in Iraq is still teetering on the brink. It could improve or it could degenerate rapidly. But I don't think the situation is hopeless. Only time will tell whether this is a case of history repeating itself or history charting a bold new course.
Mark Twain once said: "History doesn't repeat itself - at best it sometimes rhymes." He may be right, but thank God for today because I was getting pretty tired of the rhyming.
posted by A.L. at 11:10 PM
1 Comments:
" As I've written before, I think that the insurgents may have miscalculated badly when they started targeting Iraqi civilians. This indiscriminate killing appears to have alienated many Iraqis (as well as much of the Muslim world). Military commanders have reported that they are getting far more actionable intelligence than they have in the past, largely because of tips from the Sunni Arab population."
When exactly did the insurgents start targetting Iraqi civilians?
It seems to me this a red herring that originated in the right wing blogosphere as an attempt to salvage their battered credibility on Iraq by arguing, in effect, "sure we've been wrong about everything up to now, but in the end things will still turn out the way we predicted". Your scepticism about history repeating itself is misplaced: lots of people were saying the same thing even as evidence that the US was heading for imminent defeat in Vietnam mounted by the day. Similarly I can't believe you're taking the statements of military leaders at face value when they have demonstrated time and again that serving the propaganda needs of their political masters is a far higher priority than telling the American people the truth.
Finally, it is curious example of the myopia that clouds American thinking on Iraq that Americans believe that insurgent attacks against civilians necessarily helps their cause and hurts that of the insurgents -while at the same time carefully ignoring the fact that American troops have themselves been responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians.
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